New Trump administration tax guidelines rely on workers to double-check their paychecks

Source: WAPO

By Damian Paletta January 11 at 2:13 PM

Millions of Americans will need to use a new Internal Revenue Service tool to ensure their new paychecks are accurate, Trump administration officials said Thursday as they issued guidelines for implementing the recently passed tax law.

The guidelines are necessary for businesses to calculate how much to withhold in taxes from employees’ paychecks beginning as soon as next month. The White House said Thursday businesses should make these adjustments by Feb. 15, part of the administration’s push for millions of workers to see bigger paychecks as quickly as possible.

In rushing the process, the Treasury Department is asking companies to rely on outdated forms to help determine how much to withhold.

A senior Internal Revenue Service official said Thursday that Americans with simple tax situations would likely get accurate paychecks next month. But many Americans, including those who tend to itemize their tax returns, would need to use the online tool to ensure they aren’t dramatically overpaying or underpaying their taxes.

If they find their paychecks are inaccurate, it will be incumbent on the employees to tell their employers to make corrections.

6. How fucked you are of you itemize.

11. Right now everyone uses the personal standard deduction amt

to figure withholding. Generally, people claim x number of exemptions to determine how much in federal taxes to withhold from their paychecks. Usually claiming exemptions = the number of people in the household works out pretty well to a neither owe nor refund.

But, if you have a lot of high ongoing medical expenses or big mortage deduction, some people claim a lot of exemptions so they have enough money to cover their expenses because they know they'll get that money back, but need it now. If you have investment income where federal taxes aren't withheld, you need to have more tax taken out so as not to owe too much at the end of the year. Generally, you claim 0 exemptions plus an extra amount relative to your income situation.

This is what the IRS W-4 form did, but since there aren't any personal exemptions anyone, you have to figure out your tax liability some other way.

18. Your employer may short your withholding dramatically if you itemize

16. Gotta interject

Remember all the faux outrage from pukes when there were some glitches with the ACA website at its launch?

Whaddya wanna bet there will be crickets from them when chaos ensues with implementation of the GOPee tax scam?

Of course, with the IRS it's not the dump maladmin's doing per se, although no doubt like the rest of the Federal non-war gov't the IRS has suffered funding cuts and insufficient personnel to implement changes such as this.

9. Trump and the GOP lie about everything. To keep the IRS off my back, I'm sending in double

my 2017 taxes. And, I am advising every DEM I know to do the same. However, I'm telling every GOPer I know to send in 50% of their 2017 taxes -- yeah, that should be just about right to hit the center of their fake tax cut -- NOT. That should give them a good surprise screwing when they calculate their tax bill in early 2019. Of course, the GOP will blame the DEMs for not providing intellectual leadership in crafting the tax act.

13. So in other words the onus is on you and not your employer

15. Always has been.

You file your tax return, not you.

This sort of spreads the responsibility out a bit. So you'd have to check in February for 2018 and then again in spring 2018 for real. Mess it up in early 2017, you pay through your teeth in early 2018.

At the same time, the people most likely to itemize in a serious way are those most likely capable of doing precisely this. Many of my peers constantly double-check their employer. It's the people making $28k/year who don't itemize (why bother?) that most often lack the academic chops for doing this kind of thing.

I personally rather like the idea of overpaying and then getting a sizeable tax return. I've often understated deductions just for that. My peers often say, "But the federal government's getting the interest!"

So what? If you support the government morally and conceptually, then it's not a problem. If you believe that you deserve every cent from government that you can get, and want to pay not one extra cent, then it's a problem.